Prism
by The Black Sun's Daughter
Summary: Connor's got a lot to process. New team, new ARC, new colours. This was going to be difficult, he could already tell. Sequel to Spectrum.
1. A Year Without Colour

**A/N: in my twisted mind, in 3x10, Connor was left alone in the Cretaceous, Abby and Danny chased Helen into the Pliocene, Abby jumped through the anomaly, it closed before Danny could get through, and Abby ended up back in the present instead of the Cretaceous because the anomaly was like the one in the Permian, jumping through the future whilst staying anchored in the past. Yes? Everyone clear? Good. Let's do this, shall we? Also, you really have to read Spectrum first in order for this to really make sense.**

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A year without colours.

Well, in actuality, it was 398 days, but who's counting? A year without seeing rich emerald in the corner of his eye or being comforted by the presence of columbine violet. Connor had been by himself all that time. He had set up base camp in a tree near to the original anomaly site, hoping that it might someday reopen and let him go home. He was quite adept at climbing trees, especially once his ankle had healed up. He had made himself a rough bow out of a tree branch and string that was made partially out of the gloves he'd unraveled and tough, stringy plant fibres he'd found. It was crude and simplistic and he definitely wouldn't be winning any archery awards, but shooting arrows at dinosaurs from a branch 30 feet off the ground was a hell of a lot safer than trying to spear one from a foot away. Less chance of evisceration.

At first, he truly thought he'd go mad from the lack, not just of colour, but of company. _Homo sapiens_ was a social species, their entire way of life based upon social structure and interaction. They were not wired to be alone. The individual needed to trust and be around people, and they needed to be around people that could be trusted. Connor had always lived in semi-isolation, though not of his own will, but even so, he still had people that he could talk to and interact with. Now he had no one.

The only real company he had was a gift from an anomaly. Archaeopteryx were found in the mid-Jurassic, but Cutter had often told him about the peculiar out-of-place fossils, creatures dislocated from their proper times. Apparently, a small nest of Archaeopteryx had come through an anomaly at some point in time. He'd found their next, raided by the larger Caudipteryx. He had killed the Caudipteryx - it was surprisingly good, tasted a lot like fish rather than chicken, and he used the feathers for his arrows - and found a single egg not crushed or eaten.

He'd been alone for eight months by then and was probably starting to go a little crackers, but either way, he'd carefully wrapped up the egg and carried it back to his tree. Three days later, he had his own little baby Archaeopteryx. Fate or coincidence, he didn't know, but Roma, as he named the hatchling, was bone white, an albino. Even her eyes were that pale red-pink colour. And he wasn't alone anymore. He fed her bugs and tiny snippets of meat until she was old enough to catch her own insects and tiny lizards. Archaeopteryx couldn't actually fly, only glide, but she could climb just as well as anyone. She would curl up on his stomach when they slept and would ride on his shoulder or atop his head during the day, except when he was hunting. It was someone to talk to, finally, some company. She couldn't talk back to him, but she would chirp and whistle and bark and coo her own little language right back to him.

He often wondered about his friends, wondered if Danny and Abby managed to stop Helen, if they had gotten home safely. He wondered what they were doing in the ARC, if Jenny decided to come back; after the fungus incident, she had gone on a sabbatical that might or not be permanent. He wondered if Becker had finally pulled that stick out of his arse, or if he was still a big git like always. He talked to Roma about them so much that she probably knew their names by heart now.

398 days of living like a bloody caveman, without seeing his friends' colours, with only a prehistoric pigeon for company - he loved Roma, but it would be nice to talk to someone that wouldn't just chirp at him - and the one thing he had always wished for finally happened.

The anomaly reopened.

Connor nearly broke his neck climbing down the tree in his excitement, knapsack slung haphazardly over one shoulder, his crude bow and arrows in the other hand, Roma hopping on his shoulder, cheeping loudly and probably wondering what all the excitement was about. Thinking quickly, he tucked Roma inside the knapsack despite her squirming and squawking protests; he didn't want to risk running through and having her shot by some overzealous soldier or eaten by a bigger predator, depending on where the anomaly led to. Taking a deep breath and picking up the now-chirping knapsack, he ran through the anomaly.

The sudden assault on his senses had him dizzy for a moment, but he understood the yelling well enough. There were at least a dozen soldiers and so many colours, new sounds and smells and everything was making his head spin. He was actually a bit grateful to get down on the ground, because he might have well passed out from the onslaught of so much _new_ and _colour._ But as he lay there, trying to remember how to breathe and not throw up, a pair of black combats came into view. "I hope you brought me a souvenir," said a familiar voice.

Connor lifted his head a fraction, squinting a little to see familiar, warm, welcoming colours there, framing someone he thought he'd never see again. Grinning, he grasped the proffered hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Becker hugged him hard, laughing in his ear. "Knew you'd make it back someday, dork," he said, the faintest tremor to his words. Anyone else wouldn't have heard it, but Connor had spent a year hunting by sound.

When Becker let him down again, Connor kept his gaze on the captain, focusing on the colours he could see to keep himself grounded. Grinning, he simply couldn't help but to ask, "Did anyone remember to set the new episodes of _Doctor Who_ to record for me? I'd hate having to wait for reruns."

He was home.


	2. Poppy

After medical and examinations and Abby practically smothering him to death in hugs – he hasn't seen her emerald in a year, and he's practically bathing in it, God he's missed people – he meets one Philip Burton.

The first thought that really springs to mind is, _wow, that's bright._

Philip Burton is poppy red, brighter than scarlet but not quite so dark as cherry, either. It's a very interesting colour, one that he hasn't seen in a very long time, and he's almost not certain just what the hell it is, but one thing is certain. There is something...wrong...with Philip Burton's colours.

He sees it almost instantly – a year without colour, right now he's seeing everything in high-definition. Along the edges of Burton's bright, vivid poppy, the colours sort of...flicker. They jitter and spark and shiver like reality isn't quite solid in those few millimetres of space. Swirls of cool violet and icy blue and bold gold lace their way through the poppy colour, all the colours of a man with power and confidence and self-assuredness, the kind of man that isn't shaken easily and is quite used to getting his way. His colours flare around him like the cloak of a lord or a prince. It's quite a magnificent sight, and Connor's briefly stunned by it, so enthralled that he doesn't notice how tendrils of inquisitive teal inch over his own indigo, searching, testing.

But then something else catches his eye.

Abby's colours, her beautiful, vibrant emerald, shivers and turns six sorts of bristling when the poppy comes near, her edges going jagged and sharp and so ferociously scarlet that its almost painful to look at. She _loathes_ Philip Burton with everything she's got. Lester's violet twists itself into hard, defencive knots, edged with bitter yellow wariness and spiny ochre mistrust. Even Becker of the steel nerves and unshakeable nature doesn't like him, his colours drawing in close to him like a turtle drawing into its shell.

Something about Philip Burton puts them off something fierce. Connor can see it written out in colours a metre high that nobody else can see. And he makes a split decision. Burton practically owns the ARC now. Nobody else trusts him. Burton doesn't trust them, either. There's something wrong with his colours, something unstable. Connor pushes away his own unease and shakes his hand enthusiastically. All that poppy brightens, curls of self-satisfied plum blossoming. He's going to be the inside man, their mole in enemy camp, so to speak.

Connor hasn't forgotten that the poppy flower is a symbol for death.


	3. Rosewood

Becker is the colour of rosewood.

It's a very wonderful colour, one that Connor rather likes. It is a rich, dark reddish-brown that's just somewhat lighter than mahogany, with undulations of darker russet striping through it like ripples on a pond, and it always reminds him of his granddad's old chessboard and all its pieces carved out of rosewood. It is solid and strong and just like the man himself.

When he first met the captain, Connor was outwardly sceptical but inwardly impressed because it takes a certain kind of unshakeable to be able to face a prehistoric crocodilian the first day on the job and not run screaming for the nearest psychiatric hospital. Becker was the very image of the spit-and-polish soldier boy, Mr. Action Man, with his neat hair and uniform and Mossberg, ready for action at the drop of a hat. He was the kind of bloke that Connor could see surviving the zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion because nobody that badass is about to go down easy.

But that's not all there is. There's a temperance to him as well, a hidden softness buried well beneath his toughened outside. Connor can see that in the ripples of warm garnet that flow beneath the rosewood, Mr. Action Man Captain Becker is a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, and just because he had terminal foot-in-mouth disease didn't make it untrue. He has a sense of humour, though it's just as hard to find as his romantic side. Connor thinks of Becker as a rosewood box, showing only the smooth outside and encasing everything else inside. It takes weeks of working with him to catch glimpses inside the box, to see flashes of Kelly green and watermelon pink and pastel turquoise, find the actual Becker beneath the Captain.

And loyal. If nothing else, rosewood is loyal. It is solid and firm and cannot be bent or twisted. Connor doesn't hold all of the soldiers in high regard, but he trusts Becker to protect the team above all else. When that crazy bat Christine Johnson tried to take over, all frozen peacock blue and icy asteria, Connor never doubted for an instant just whose side Becker was really on, not even when he had a gun trained on them and was threatening to use force if necessary. Rosewood is loyal. The only reason Connor had been able to stand the idea of running off after Helen on some wild treasure trail through history was the knowledge that Becker was going to stay behind and look after things in their absence. When he came back, he wasn't surprised to see Becker still there, holding down the fort, even after the loss of Sarah had left a terrible crimson scar in him. Even now, he knows that he can count on Becker to keep the others safe from Burton and Prospero if Connor can't manage it on his own.

Connor trusts him.


	4. Oil Black

Ethan – or is he Patrick? – whatever the hell his name is, he is one scary, off-his-rocker, lock-up-the-padded-room-and-throw-away-the-key bloke.

Danny had told them once that he lost his little brother to the anomalies, and Connor had been genuinely sorry to hear it. He knew personally how much it hurt to lose someone close to your heart, how crimson it made a person turn. He never, not in a million years – or rather, several million, depending on the era – would have imagined that Danny's little brother would actually _survive_ the anomalies and the creatures. Or that he would turn out to be a raging psychopath.

Because Ethan's colours are _black._ Not a dark grey, not a deep indigo or a very dark violet. Black. And not the good kind, like licorice or a night sky. This is the thick, sluggish, sticky blackness of used oil, the colour of absolute madness, with jagged spires of burning scarlet and seething yellow hissing and spitting in that darkness like burning coals in a pit.

Connor sees Ethan for the first time, and he nearly has a panic attack. Because he's only seen that kind of darkness twice before in his life. Once was in Helen Cutter, she had that oily black oozing through the cracks in her ruby colours. The second was when he was a child. There'd been a string of murders across West Yorkshire, a serial killer on some kind of demented spree. The man was responsible for the deaths of 28 people. Connor had been nine years old, and he had seen the man and known instantly who he was. Because his colours were that same complete and utter black, like tar and oil, the sticky, clingy darkness that'd drag a person down and never let them go again.

That was what Ethan Dobrowski's – he's not Patrick Quinn, Patrick Quinn died a long time ago, swallowed in the blackness – colours were. Connor sees him and can only think of a saying he heard once, a quote he read somewhere. He doesn't remember who said it, but the words still appear in his mind when he gets his first real look at Ethan Dobrowski. _If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze back into you._ That's what Ethan is. An abyss, a gaping void with no bottom, full of nothing but that sickly, raging darkness, sticky tendrils always reaching, searching for a new victim to seek out and strangle.

Connor is quite happy to see him go.


	5. Sea Blue

For all that Ethan is dark and twisted and awful, Danny is not.

Danny is blue, but not like Stephen was blue. Stephen was cool Prussian blue, full of secrets and hidden things. Danny is the blue of the sea, almost-but-not-quite the same changeable colour as his eyes, that can seem bluer than anything one moment but can then shift to a greenish hue. And that sea colour is vibrant, full of life and energy. Danny isn't very good at keeping his feelings under wraps; if he was, he wouldn't be Danny. Connor can watch them all spin and spiral across the sea, salmon pink and butter yellow and quicksilver grey, spring green and pale teal and pastel white. And always, there is that playful fizz of honey around the edges that shows itself in his friendly ribbing and jokes.

At first, Connor didn't think too much of Danny Quinn. But then again, he'd only ever seen him calm and steady and in a more-or-less good mood. But when Danny got mad, actually _angry,_ then it was an entirely different kettle of onions. Then the sea would be roiling and frothing, with shades of burnt amber and scarlet and acid green sparking thought it. Danny in a mood is not nearly so pleasant. But no matter how scary he might be, Danny is still Danny and will soon enough be back to teasing Becker about his hair and Connor about his crush on Abby and trying his hand at flirting with Jenny. So close after losing Cutter, the presence of the copper was one of the things that allowed them to heal the way that they had. They had all been hurting and miserable, blanketed with the storm-grey and crimson of sorrow and pain, but Danny had been the one to bring them back out of it. He'd held them up and got them moving again, had brought the life and the colour back to them. And he had become one of them, a part of their little group.

Of everyone on the team, he thinks he might have missed Danny second-most – first-most always being Abby. And tea. Because Danny was more like Cutter than he would ever think was possible. They had never met, but Connor can still see it. They would have never gotten along. Never. They were too alike to get along, actually. That was what made it so bloody amusing. But beneath it all, he knows they still carry the same steadfast russet loyalty, the hard violet stubbornness and willfulness, the amethyst unorthodox-if-effective brilliance, same hunter green protectiveness of the team. Danny would do anything for them, and come down to it, Connor is glad that Danny Quinn is with them. When he comes back, Danny is still missing, still lost somewhere in the ages. He finds that he isn't overly worried.

Connor knows Danny wouldn't leave them behind.


	6. Peridot

April Leopold is his own personal assistant, provided to him by the poppy Philip Burton, and she is peridot. Peridot is a lighter green, not quite spring, with a yellowish tinge to it.

The first thought that sprang to mind when he laid eyes upon April was that if imitation was the highest form of flattery, then Abby would just be tickled fuchsia. April is short and petite, with blond hair and blue eyes. And she is green. Peridot green, paler than Abby's emerald. She is just that. A paler imitation of Abby. It's actually quite amusing.

What isn't so amusing is what lies beneath the peridot. Because underneath all that pale peridot is none of Abby's warm colours, none of her hidden sweetness and gentleness. There is ice blue and frost silver, sharp yellow and burnt sienna. April Leopold might wear the frumpy jumpers and the big glasses, but underneath, he can see the mind of someone just as cold and calculating as a predator. Connor has learned to recognise them. He doesn't even realise it at first, but he treats her like a predator. He always sits with his back to the wall, where he can always see her in his peripheral vision, and he doesn't leave the lab before she does because that would mean showing her his back. He treads silently around her and reflexively reaches for his knife whenever she makes too sudden of a motion.

She is Burton's own little spy, a handler disguised as a helper. He can see the poppy traces in her colours. April is not someone to be underestimated. But he keeps it together. The game is afoot, and missteps couldn't be afforded. So, he always kept his numbers just ever so slightly off. Not so badly off that it was obvious sabotage, but just enough that they couldn't constructively use it for whatever they wanted it for, and he acts just as frustrated as she when things don't turn out properly. He watched her turn all spiny and scarlet around the edges.

Connor liked Abby's colours much more.


	7. Eminence

Jess is a new colour purple, one that he's never seen as a base colour.

It is a shade of purple that is brighter than royal but not quite amethyst yet, called eminence. He thinks it's a silly name for a colour, but that is what it's called, and in a way in suits her. Eminence: distinction, prominence, importance. Jess is all of these things, and he liked her quite a bit. She's almost what he imagined having an annoying little sister would be like. Connor had a sister, but she was an annoying big sister, and that wasn't quite the same. When he first meets her, she is dressed in a short, snug dress that's almost the same shade as her eminence, four inches taller than she is normally thanks to a pair of heels that look more like some sort of primordial animal-trapping device than shoes, and she's almost as stunning to his colour-deprived eyes as Burton is, except there's absolutely nothing wrong with the eminence.

She is eminence and full of so much brightness and joy that he finds himself naturally gravitating towards her just as much as he drifts towards Abby after a long day. Emerald is good comfort, something to relax into like a hot bath, but eminence is like a rainbow after the thunderstorm, the cheery pick-me-up at the end of the day. Just sitting close enough to watch all her brilliant, bright colours flicker and dance together across the eminence makes him feel a little better.

But its also absolutely hilarious when Becker comes near her. Because then her colours get so twisty and curly, and she'll turn the most impressive shade of magenta, shivering with excitement and infatuation. And, naturally, Becker being _Becker,_ just looks at her, confused tan and straw-yellow blooming in the rosewood, and then he'll manage to say something stupid or insensitive, and then her colours flinch slightly, but the magenta always comes back. She's persistent, if nothing else. He finds watching the two of them just as amusing as watching Jenny and Cutter.

Connor wonders if anyone's started betting yet.


	8. Roman Silver

Of all the new faces Connor has come to learn in the ARC, he is most uncertain of Matt.

Matt is Roman silver, a pale, matte silver colour that has no real shine, just a dull glow to it. When Connor sees him, all he can think of is a mirror that has no reflection, a sheet of steel, once polished, now completely fogged over. Revealing nothing. It's a baffling thing, one that he's never seen, and only by staring into the Roman silver for several minutes can he even begin to see a flicker of any other colour underneath it. Matt has every human emotion and reaction buried down so bloody deep it might very well take a spelunking expedition to find them again. For that, Connor knows that whoever he is, Matt Anderson is not what he says he is, because nobody keeps themselves so forcefully cut off from their own emotions.

But still, beneath it all, Matt is a good man, a trustworthy man. Because lying closest to the surface of the Roman silver, which is still deeply buried but not so deep as everything else, is a solid rosewood that echoes Becker's own colours, an unbendable loyalty to the team, with ripples of that same hunt-green protectiveness in it. There are none of the colours that Connor knows to avoid because they denote only bad things: ivy green, peacock blue, daisy yellow. No, Matt has good colours, solid, dependable colours that can be leant upon.

Still, that unreadable Roman silver worries him, and he often finds himself staring hard at it, trying to study that matte-gray surface and see what's underneath it. Abby asks him if he has some sort of man-crush on the Irishman, he stares at him so often and so studiously. Connor always laughs and brushes it off, but he knows that Matt is hiding something, and he is damn determined to figure out just what that is.

Slowly but surely, though, as the months go on, that Roman silver begins to lose some of that unreadable fogged-over nature. His colours begin to inch their way towards the surface, but rising slowly, like they were trying to pull themselves through cold molasses. Others in the ARC liked to tease Matt about his never making an expression, wondering if he was actually a person or an android; Connor knows better. He gets more adept at reading the unreadable Matt, and he comes to like this strange Irishman that is their leader. But he's still determined to find out just what that Roman silver is hiding.

Connor is nothing if not persistent.


	9. Opal

Emily is the most stunning sort of colour that Connor's ever seen in his life.

She is opal, the colour that is no colour and every colour at the same time. Trying to watch her colours for too long makes him a little dizzy, actually. Opal is almost every colour that there is, hues changing and rippling depending on how the light falls upon it, except that her light is her own emotions. She's always shimmering and glittering, but like every feeling she has is right there against her skin, just below the surface, yet somehow she can still hide behind a mask. But then again, Connor doesn't need to be able to read her expressions to know what she's feeling.

Opal is a pale, creamy off-white pearl colour, but when the angle changes, then sparks of brilliant colour will appear within its surfaces. People think that he's shy or something because he can hardly look at her for more than a few moments at a time; the reality is, he's trying to spare himself a headache. Emily is _dazzling._ Nobody can ever best Abby's emerald, but damned if Emily's opal isn't a fair second.

But what he finds most interesting about that opal is what it does to a certain Roman silver. When Emily approaches Matt, opal shimmering brightly, his own colours shiver despite themselves, and a deep magenta blush wells up from those deeply-hidden depths, tentatively interacting with hers and throwing off sparks of pale green and honey gold in mutual attraction. She is strong, independent, nobody's housewife or arm candy, he sees it in those flashes of lapis lazuli and oaken brown, but that only makes the magenta blush darken in Matt's colours. Connor likes her very much and hopes that she stays around, because if anyone could coax a smile out of the Roman silver man, it would be the woman carved out of opal.

When Ethan's oily darkness tries to steal her away from them, it is Matt that burns with so much scarlet Connor can barely see any of the silver underneath. When Emily leaves them, Connor aches to see the opalescent brilliance go, but it is Matt that grows morose and midnight blue in her absence. When she returns again, this time to stay, they all rejoice, but again, it is Matt's colours that burn brighter in her presence, and her opal blushes the same lovely fuchsia when she's around him, their colours intertwining to form a lovely garnet of mutual love identical to the garnet that he and Abby now share.

The man from the future, the woman from the past.

Connor loves this life.

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 **A/N: now, going back, look at the first letter of every chapter, excluding "A Year Without Colour."**


End file.
